Can you expand on what's new post 2010?

1. Japan has become much "chiller" from a work culture perspective, with hours worked being comparable to those of the UK and Ireland [0] thanks to regulatory changes in the 2010s.

2. While conglomerates remain prominent, a new generation of large Western-style employers like Rakuten, Mercari, LY, SoftBank, etc have arisen and operate with American-style (and -educated) management, and the stereotypical "salaryman" lifestyle is on it's last legs.

3. Japan has quietly become an immigration driven society. A major reason behind the rise of Takechi's faction in the LDP as well as Sanseito is because of the post-2019 immigration boom [1]. Going from less that 1% overseas born residents to around 4% in roughly 5 years was a massive shift socially and impacted both blue and white collar employment in Japan.

4. Japan has culturally shifted to be accepting of an offensive military posture. You see this shift in Japanese media (eg. SnK, Nippon Sangoku) as well as Japanese foreign policy [2]. A more muscular Japan with a chip on their back is arising.

5. Younger Japanese are more open to calling out tourists and Westerners when they do weird or weeb s#it or treat Japan as their own Disneyland. They now treat Westerners the same way they treat other non-Japanese people now. The mindset shift I've noticed is an "us" (which now includes Koreans and Taiwanese) versus "them" which now includes everyone else.

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Ironically, I think contemporary South Korea is closer to the image that HNers have of Japan versus Japan today.

[0] - https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/hours-worked.html

[1] - https://www.cw.com.tw/article/5136468

[2] - https://www.foreignaffairs.com/japan/return-japanese-hard-po...

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marek77 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd largely question the accuracy of point 1 IN PRACTICE. Japan is notorious for uncounted and unpaid overtime, vacation days no one takes, and paternal leave you'd better not think of if you don't want to instantly become your division's outcast. I worked in a host of countries, including the UK and Japan (the latter about a decade ago - I'd be surprised if things had diametrally changed since that time). The actual work hours are not remotely comparable. (In fact the UK is one of the locales where I worked the least in terms of actual hours. Much less than in France, where they're supposed to be slackers... So generally I call BS on these stats.)

	▲	alephnerd 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		See, this is the issue. Karoshi/unpaid overtime in white collar work largely ended as a practice in Japan by the 2010s due to legal changes and enforcement via the 2018 labor reforms and a tight labor market. Yet you see the same tropes peddled ad nauseum. I may as well use the same priors for Poland in 2026 as I would in the 2000s then when it was Europe's punching bag. The reality is stuff changes.